Insert Economist Joke Here

Students at University of California schools have been protesting the decision of the Board of Regents “to raise undergraduate fees — the equivalent of tuition — 32 percent next fall.” But higher tuition, if it is accompanied with higher financial aid for lower- and middle-income students, improves equity

This, the start of a longer article by Ian Ayres at the Freakonomics blog of the New York Times, continues the argument about equity and tuition to reach triumphantly the conclusion that “By increasing the effective tuition for some of our wealthier students, we might be able to reduce the price for some of the less wealthy.” In other words, the tuition raise could be a good thing.

Reading it, I boggled. It’s a particular kind of context-and-responsibility-free analysis, shorn of everything except the preconceptions and assumptions of a particular discipline, that actively reduces the quality of the debate by giving one position the cover of a seemingly scholarly analysis. Is it likely that California, in the midst of a massively catastrophic fiscal situation, with a horrendously dysfunctional state government, will raise the amount of financial aid for state students? Or that the federal government, also facing serious fiscal issues and with a certain level of dysfunction of its own, will step into that absence?

Really?

So essentially, the argument is that the tuition raise might be a good thing if this almost certainly impossible thing happens along with it. That’s not reasoning, that’s “and a pony” logic.

That’s not even considering the myriad other problems with the argument. Is it possible that there could be other definitions of equity rather than economic that a university might be seeking with low up-front tuition? Is it possible that the lower-income students might be thrown off by the intimidation factor of high up-front price and simply not apply at all? Is it possible that having high tuitions at the state colleges in California will further erode the sense of ownership that Californians have in their state system and lead to a continuing spiral of budget cuts and tuition increases? I don’t know, but I rather suspect that all of those issues are worth considering.

Also worth considering is the idea that those who are public voices simply because of their reputation for acuity would do well to live up to that reputation.

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Yudof has been doing exactly this number, too, with his talking up the Blue and Gold program. It always sounds good (families that make under 70k pay no tuition), but not only are most such students already covered under Pell grants, there are, in practice, relatively few students who actually qualify for it (but he makes exactly this argument, that raising tuition actually makes the university more equitable)

I just noticed, silbey, that I accidentally hit post on something I wrote earlier today. And because someone commented already on my post, I can’t really follow my usual practice in a case like this — changing the time stamp so that my post disappears for awhile and then reappears later — where I’ve unintentionally stepped on a co-blogger’s post. I’m sorry about that. And I’m sorrier still that I’m saying in my post that all military historians are Holocaust deniers. But the facts are the facts.

Wait.
There was a Holocaust, now? Maybe if I’d been able to afford to go to Yale, I’d know that.
Also, if I knew that I could do a weapon specialisation in Giant Student Loan, I wouldn’t have paid it down so far.
Cleric!

(Also, if the university raises fees to from $9000 to $10,000, and then gives a grand back to every student, except for that one really rich student, it’s up a grand, and your kids won’t have to rub elbows with the kinds of kids whose parents can’t fill out the applications for financial relief forms to the university’s satisfaction.
As to who those kids will turn out to be, well, trust us on this one.)

You really aren’t engaging the substance of Ayres’s argument. Granted, he doesn’t address the positive externalities of university education and he fails to indicate how we would get to higher financial aid, but the basic analysis is sound. Why *do* we subsidize the upper middle class? Socialism for the rich, yet again.

My point was that the substance of Ayres’s argument can only be reached by ignoring the entire context of the situation and making dubious value-assumptions about things like the meaning of “equity.” Given his failure at that level, the substance becomes irrelevant.

silbey, you once again demonstrate your poor knowledge of analytic philosophy. “Pony logic” is a well-respected branch of modal logic, first advanced by Frege in his magisterial Begriffsschrift, and then put in its final form by Kripke.

Its horrible to consider a financial aid strategy that is employed by every elite private campus and quite a few public schools? The past tuition setup was a giant subsidy to upper middle class kids. There is no reason a household making 250k should be paying only 13k in tuition where a private school would cost them 40k. One of the reasons my school (an elite private school.) can recruit low income kids away from a UC campus is because they pay much less- they come out of our school with no loans. This is really a poorly considered post. Tuition is going to go up with the states finances and it would be better to jack it up more for wealthy families in order to subsidize low income.

caldem, i also went to a private college, on scholarships and luck and working up to 3 jobs. and yes, i’m grateful for the financial aid available. my husband and my sister went to UC berkeley, both working themselves through, with financial aid.

the point here is that financial aid is not keeping up. and the costs are so high now that no student can get by without very serious financial help. my parents contributed $2000 to my post-high school education, and then i was on my own. and in my day, i could get by without enormous loans. that is not really true now.

All the students I know at Liberal Hotbed State U. Nowhere-in-particular (as opposed to the University of Liberal Hotbed State on the Hill Overlooking the Beach with the NFL Farm Team) are still waiting for the financial aid to cover OUR system’s fee increase….

Somehow I think the folks at Big U (as opposed to the Other System U) aren’t going to see any more financial aid, either.

And not to be classist or anything, but somehow I don’t think the good doctor worked his way through Yale and MIT – or via Pell grants.

Here’s where you’re wrong, and it’s not your fault. Because most people don’t realize what “financial aid” means at UC. It includes a large amount of Federal aid that people are eligible for in any case, but the razor in the candy floss is loans. Lots of the “financial aid that means you don’t have to pay tuition” is actually loans, which means, sure, people don’t have to pay tuition up front, but they graduate with up to $96,000 in debt.

Also, the program only applies to in-state undergraduate students. Which means graduate students get screwed (we’re not eligible), and it means that international students get screwed (they never become in-state).

And the proof is in the pudding – if this program actually improved equity, you’d see the UC becoming more diverse in terms of class. The opposite is happening.

Thanks Steven, I was a UC professor and student, and I know the burden of the “financial aid.” I came out of UCLA with quite a bit of loan debt.

I don’t think this fee increase is going to improve financial aid. However, a different fee increase that increased the top end tuition even more while increasing financial aid (actual aid-meaning grants) could lessen the effect these tuition increases on lower income households.

So I agree with everybody-more financial aid !- but the actual way that can be done is pushing for even higher tuition and insisting that the increase be directed towards grants etc. The only other way to get more financial aid is to increase taxes in the State (which would be great if they are progressive taxes). And that seems even less politically likely than getting the Regents on board with a plan.

I’m glad to see your clarification of what a “fee increase with increasing financial aid” might mean.
I just think that it is wrong.
The key question here is why intergenerational social mobility has declined in the United States in the last generation, even as university attendance has reached (IMHO) unsustainably high levels. This study has received considerable attention of late:

I would discount the use of Canada as a counter-example, since our numbers seem to be an artefact of the way immigration happens up here.
Of particular relevance here is the finding that educational attainment in the United States (unlike Britain) does not correlate well with social mobility, although it does match to income spread.
We’re doing it wrong.
My hunch is that the university wealth-producing effect has more to do with social networking than with education. It follows that we should be looking for the same kind of social gatekeeping effect that was unapologetically in effect in centuries past, when we built walls around universities and only let gentlemen in.
A number of posts here at EotAW have posited that high tuition fees, even given financial aid grants, are an important component of the fortifications. My thinking, given potential parallels with Canadian experience, is that we should be looking at something more pervasive and subtle, but the evidence to hand is that the generation-old argument that higher fees+higher student aid equals increased opportunities for social out groups, is wrong.

Intergenerational social mobility is a great idea, but if it’s all one-way, sooner or later the middle class will be full, and what then? I am semi-serious – at some point there will be no economic niche for ever-larger numbers of graduates [especially not if Chinese ones are cheaper].

This is the problem, isn’t it? The capacity of education to act as an opportunity generator is only as elastic as the job market for educated candidates, and further restricted by the superior self-reproductive resources of class and status elites, including each generation’s new ones. We can stave off the bottleneck for awhile by reducing standards and inflating credential requirements, but eventually the investment has to pay off or there’s got to be a shakeout.